Well, here’s problem. People who abuse women always think they have a good reason for doing it. That’s how abuse works. It’s a function of widespread ignorance and fear. And since when did an abuser really see themselves as such? They always think they are doing it for the victim’s own good, so that she will learn to be better and not make the same “mistakes” again. Corrective abuse, one might call it. Find a space with women in it and trust me, thinks the abuser, some of them will need to be tamed.

You might be a woman yourself, a feminist even, but still find it hard to approach other women as though they are human beings. Perhaps you’ve found some distancing strategy that makes you feel less of a “basic” female. That’s okay. After all, it’s hard to remain a decent person in a highly abusive environment. Tapping into a special vein of misogyny that you’ve decided doesn’t apply to you is a natural reaction. It’s not right but there’s still time to change.

To help you get back on track, I’ve written this handy, deeply patronising checklist for abusive feminists everywhere. Please make the time to read it. After all, what harm can one more passive-aggressive, “stop being such a shit feminist” list do when there are so many out there already?

So, let’s begin:

1. According to the most up-to-date scientific research, women are human beings. And yes, that includes all women, even the ones you don’t like. I know this will make some of you feel a bit icky. That’s fine. It often takes people time to get used to this idea. Give yourself the space to work on your internalised prejudice (it’s hard, I know *sends solidarihugs*).

2. All women have things called “ideas” and “opinions”. It can be difficult when you first encounter this online, at least if a woman’s ideas and opinions differ to yours. A common impulse is to call her a bigot, accuse her of various phobias and invite the rest of the internet to shame her into submission. Don’t panic if that’s what you’ve been doing. You simply need to get to grips with the idea that a person not agreeing with you is okay, even if that person is a woman (I know, a woman! Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But trust me, letting women have opinions won’t be any worse than letting men have them. You just need to overcome your fear of this).

3. For a long time it was believed that only men could have what we call “real emotions”. Nowadays it’s recognised that women have them, too, but it’s still felt that a woman can forfeit them if she steps out of line. For instance, while we know that “die in a fire” or “STFU you shit-for-brains cunt” would upset the average man, a recalcitrant woman is widely held to respond only with “sadfeelz”. This is, alas, bad science. All current indications suggest that even women who lack the #twitterfeminism seal of approval have actual emotional responses to threats and abuse. That’s something to bear in mind next time you start putting a dot before the @ in your tweet.

4. Lots of us believe that older women exist only to make us feel important, stroke our bruised egos and occasionally do the housework. Hence if you encounter an older woman online, it can be terribly disappointing if she doesn’t seem utterly bowled over by your edgy sexual exploits, or has the temerity not to think your self-centred view of gender overwrites her more critical one. The thing to remember is: older women are not your mum. They’re not going to cut you some slack just because they love you. They have their own shit to deal with and don’t owe you approval. It comes back to the “women being people” thing. Keep repeating that to yourself until one day you believe it.

5. One of the oldest forms of misogyny comes in the belief that the female body is corruptive, sinful and repulsive. You might think you have ideas about sex and gender which make you immune to this reaction and if so, that’s cool. However, if your immediate response to someone mentioning words such as period and vagina (but not penis or testes) is to tweet “fuck off, cissexist scum!” it may be that you still have issues.

6. These days most cultures allow women to manage their own relationships and interact socially without the presence of a chaperone, partner or male relative. That’s something to bear in mind if you find yourself regularly checking up on whom a woman is following on twitter, quizzing her over her online “associations,” warning people not to talk to X because she’s been seen talking to Y etc..

7. Making women feel uncertain about themselves — that their views are not authoritative, their thought processes tainted by bigotry, their suffering unverified, their “lived experiences” neither real nor raw enough to count — is a common abuser’s tactic. This may be something you do without even meaning to. You might think you have the lived experiences against which all other women must measure theirs (and that theirs will invariably be found wanting). You might secretly enjoy spreading uncertainty and acquiring obedient followers, desperate not to offend you with their silly woman ideas. All this means is that you are acting like an entitled prick. But don’t worry! There’s always time to change. Read and re-read this list, then resolve to do better.

8. Being a woman isn’t meant to feel modern or cutting edge. Womanhood doesn’t need repackaging or pruning, leaving the embarrassing “waste” behind. All women who speak are women whom, as a feminist, you should feel some responsibility towards. That’s really annoying, isn’t it? But that’s people for you.

It’s okay if all this is new to you. Take your time. In the meantime, here’s a shit, babyish cartoon to help you on your journey:

Still feeling uncomfortable? Patronised? Offended? Don’t worry. This is how most women feel online all the time. Terrified of saying the wrong thing. Judged simply for existing. Frightened that if they call out abuse, they’ll just be accused of bigotry. Patronised by passive-aggressive lists which outline all of the ways in which they are to blame for all social ills. Blamed for all the bad things that happen to them, tortured by the thought that those accusing them could be right.

If you feel even a tiny bit of that right now, think carefully before you launch in to your next attack. If, on the other hand, you’ve already composed a tweet in which you describe how I’ve written a post all about defending privilege, you’re nothing if not predictable and hopelessly, determinedly wrong.

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On Wednesday evening I had a revelation in the chip shop. Well, two in fact. The first was that I do not have to spend money on individual pickled onions to go with my chips, given that I have a jar of Hayward’s in the fridge at home. The second was that I spend far too much time hate-reading on twitter.

Over a year ago, I stopped hate-reading the Mail Online and have never looked back. I always knew it was a self-indulgent, pointless thing to do, adding to their click rate just so I could feel righteously outraged over things that anyone with the slightest bit of imagination could feel outraged over quite independently. Nevertheless, I’d get annoyed when people told me not to keep going back to the site. Couldn’t they see I needed to know my enemy? Didn’t they realise that the puny ambition of feeling less of a tosser than Richard Littlejohn mattered? Thankfully, I don’t do this any more, but I worry I’ve just transferred the obsession over to twitter, where, if anything, it’s worse. Continue reading →

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My kids are hilarious. If you followed me on twitter, you’d already know this. Rarely a day goes by without some comedy disaster involving underpants, missing homework or a mix-up between Star Wars and real life. It might not sound funny now but if you heard about their antics in real time (which twitter permits), you’d be rolling in the aisles. Or at least mildly amused. Or maybe you’d just unfollow. Anyhow, to me they will always be unwitting comedy giants.

I tweet about the funny things they say because they have no idea why I’m laughing, and I feel a bit pathetic laughing on my own (or worse, at them). The way in which a child’s intelligence develops ahead of knowledge or experience can often be tedious, but just occasionally it leads to wonderful linguistic errors, bizarrely out-of-place quotations and passionate defences of things which simply cannot be true (although mistrustful observers rarely bear in mind how much random nonsense you’ve had to get through before mining these gems). Obviously when it’s your own child you believe these flashes of hilarity may also be a sign that your offspring is a total genius (that one time my six-year-old said the Tudors were followed by the Steves, I was dining out on it for months).

I might share daft things my children say, and you may or may not find them amusing, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t make me less politically engaged. It doesn’t mean I think this is the only thing the internet is for. It doesn’t mean I am naturally conservative, unthinking, classist, fantastical, desperate for retweets from “some fifth-rate blazer ‘n’ T-shirt wearing comedian who guest-starred in one episode of Rev and has gained 2,500 followers as a result”. Except apparently it does. Some blokes – one of whom, Clive Martin, wrote a piece for Vice, the other of whom set up a “hilarious, but not in an uncool mumsy way” twitter account – have decreed that it is so. Humour is for the child-free hipsters. Iconoclasm doesn’t allow for maintaining a sense of humour while also keeping a critical focus on material reality; it’s taking the piss out of parents for not keeping out of the way while you treat the internet as one endless, pretentious undergraduate party.

Obviously I like chuckling at the edgy witticisms of youngish men as much as the next person. Like women and older people, parents can’t really do humour. They lack the intellect, moral rigour and involvement with the stuff of real life. They’re not even any good at curating the accidental bon mots of their little ones, but then that’s hardly surprising. As Clive Martin sympathetically notes in his analysis of The Sad World of Adults Pretending to Be Kids for Retweets:

Looking after a young kid must be pretty arduous and alienating at times, so you can understand why things like Mumsnet and gin exist.

I know! Such empathy from one who still has his finger on the pulse of human endeavour and suffering! The sad thing is, give us parents an inch and we’ll take a mile. We’re not just keeping to the Mumsnet talkboards, we’re now tweeting things about our kids which may not even be funny! Think of all the important twitterspace that’s taking up! Space that could be devoted to important things, such as mocking people because reasons.

While many of the current targets of mockery are male, I can’t help thinking there is a thinly veiled misogyny behind this latest round of parent-bashing (with the implication being that men who tweet about their children are in some way less intellectually engaged and honest, and therefore less “male”). Feminists have long pointed out that experiences of childcare and domestic life are edged out of public discourse, and this applies whether we’re talking about comedy or art. Such experiences are not considered “authentic” enough. When Marilyn French wrote The Women’s Room, the life of someone who cares for children was not considered novel-worthy. There’s nothing grand, nothing big or meaningful, even if it represents a person’s whole horizon. Why should the real people – those out there in proper, public life – have to come anywhere close to it? Why should anyone want to read your pathetic little domestic tweets, even in a light-hearted context? That’s not proper activism, at least not when activism is reduced to gaining retweets. But shouldn’t it be more than that?

Does it matter whether the tweets are true? Well, jokes frequently aren’t true, or are based on exaggeration (mine aren’t. My kids really are that funny. Honest). The problem, I feel, is the subject matter and the fact that individuals should gain approval for something considered so lowly. Only a tiny sector of society – youngish, child-free, male, snarky, educated yet cagey about it – are allowed that special pat on the back.

Parenting is not, in and of itself, anti-establishment. It enforces a degree of enclosure. Nevertheless, the minutiae of childrearing, the shared truths, even the shared lies, are part of how a community is formed. Mocking inoffensive jokes isn’t just hurtful; it betrays a misanthropy which shouldn’t form part of drive for social change. My children might not make you laugh but that’s not your problem.

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By now plenty of people will have heard about the quite-possibly-imaginary Elan Gale vs Diane “plane note row”. Depending on where you stand, it’s either hilarious or really fucking frightening. Me, I’m veering towards the latter. Elan Gale, I hope I’m never on the number 12 bus, let alone on a plane with you.

The plane note row (if it actually took place and wasn’t just some misogynist’s wildest fantasy) was live tweeted by Gale last Thursday. It (allegedly) reached its height with Gale sending a note which included the line “eat my dick” to female passenger, having smugly tweeted out said note to all his followers. To put this in context, the woman – “Diane” – had been rude to flight attendants (a crime for which, as far as I am aware, the recommended punishment is not sexual harassment within a confined space). During the exchange that ensued, Gale pressured flight attendants to become complicit in his abuse by transferring the notes between him and “Diane” – who, he happened to tweet, was “in her late 40s or early 50s” and was wearing “mom jeans” (hence not only rude but not even shaggable!).

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I’m writing in response to your Observer piece on Roman Polanski and the sin of simplification. I might as well say straight off that I don’t agree with it. But wait, don’t leave just yet! For I have a PhD! From Cambridge! Therefore I’m assuming I’m allowed opinions, too (this may be presumptuous of me; I didn’t get a first and I’m useless at Only Connect, but do bear with me).

You’re aware that your piece has angered many people. Indeed just recently you tweeted:

Some remarkably un-nuanced responses to my piece about nuance. Ah well. If there hadn’t been, there would have been no need to write it.

Ah, those silly, silly people, with their knee-jerk reactions and idiotic binary thinking. As you yourself write, “our modern world does not invite us to treat anyone as nuanced. People are heroes or villains, victims or victimisers; sometimes neither, but never both”. It takes a special kind of visionary to see through all this, doesn’t it? Most people, well, they’re just too busy getting mindlessly self-righteous to sit down, brow a-furrowed, and ponder the ways in which Roman Polanski’s work being “filled with beauty and humanity” sits uneasily beside the fact that he’s also a child rapist (because hey, that’s way too confusing for our little heads! How can he do bad things AND good things? How can anyone, other than an utter intellectual giant, cope with such thoughts without a total brain meltdown?). Continue reading →

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I’ve been away from twitter for most of the past fortnight. This is not, I hasten to add, because I’ve been off on some non-intersectional white feminist flounce. Chance would be a fine thing. I’ve been camping with two small children in rainy Wales, miles away from wifi, central heating and dry clothing. Would that I had the privilege of indulging in a modern-day cyber-sulk (I’ve had to settle for grumpily hogging most of the double sleeping bag while telling my partner, bitterly, that this was all his stupid idea).

Anyhow, I’m back and I see that people still aren’t playing nicely (to use the most condescending words possible to refer to others being genuinely upset). Don’t worry, though, I’m here to sort it out. Because I’m mega-privileged but I’m also apologetic, and that makes everything alright.

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To misquote Ghandi, Robbie Williams and the great Mike Buchanan, “first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then you fight them, then – well, then you get told to get back in the kitchen, make them a sandwich and iron their shirt”. Sound familiar? It should do if you’re a feminist. “Get back in the kitchen” – a command that even my dad thought was a bit sexist in 1976 – is back in vogue. Got embroiled in a heated online debate? Getting a bit too uppity and clever for the likes of your designated mansplainer? Well, then, it’s “back in the kitchen” time for you, missy!

As argumentative techniques go, I have to say, this one’s a total bummer. Men only ever say it – or one of its many minor domestic servitude-related variants – to annoy you. No other reason for it. It’s not as though you can literally make your opponent a cup of tea and deliver it via a tweet, or iron his shirt and present it, crease-free, in your next CiF comment. They just want to make you cross in a really minor, low-level way that isn’t permitted to spill over into full-on rage because that would just be silly. I mean, seriously! “Make me a sandwich”? You want to install a twitter alarm button for that? (Actually, I do. The stupid domestic requests alert. Only it would be misused and you’d end up barred from all social media just for saying you fancied a custard cream, so it’s never going to happen.) Anyhow, people only say “get back in the kitchen” etc. to rile you but the trouble is, it works. Then you get extra-cross at yourself for feeling riled. Then you get even more cross with yourself for being meta-cross with yourself (or maybe that’s just me). Whatever, it’s really annoying.

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At risk of being deemed yet another person whose sanity is in question or who isn’t a “true feminist[] at all”, I thought I’d write my own response to Christian Jessen’s recent twitter comments regarding rape. This is because they made me angry, the reasons for which I will state below. Or it is because I have mental health problems, for which I take medication and for which I have on occasion been hospitalised. Or it’s because unlike Dr Jessen I’m actually shit at feminism. I guess it’s up to those reading to make their own diagnosis.

There are individual facts about rape and then there’s the broader context in which they’re publicised and discussed. There is no point in discussing the first without taking the second into account because by raising the subject you are helping to shape this broader context. To pretend that things are otherwise is at best naïve and at worst deliberately obtuse. Continue reading →

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This morning I took down a post I’d written the night before. No one asked me to and I didn’t feel particularly bullied or intimidated into doing so. I took it down because I tried really hard to achieve a particular objective and I failed, badly. I know writing stuff isn’t magic and most of it makes no difference anyhow but sometimes, the feeling that you rarely, if ever, have genuine exchanges with people who see things differently – and that all that really happens is you gain the approval of people who would have agreed with you anyhow – is just a bit grim.

I don’t think there is anything at all I can add to debates on feminism, twitter, intersectionality, privilege and bullying – other than that I think no one else can add much, either. It has reached a point where, in essence, in order to try and defend people I like without appearing to be “one of them” or “taking sides” I feel the only option is to defend them badly, with so many qualifications and ifs and buts that what I’m writing becomes impenetrable (or rather, it becomes terribly nuanced, so nuanced that anyone who so wishes can see a “hidden message” – and such a message can mean different things to different people). Hence there’s no point. If every single argument you make has no value because it’s just the kind of argument you would make – because your argument itself demonstrates your bias, hence invalidating itself – then there is absolutely no point in making an effort to connect. You might as well just patronize people by pretending to agree with them all the time or shut up. Continue reading →

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Here is an odd fact: whenever there is a twitterstorm surrounding Caitlin Moran, one or both of my children vomits. I don’t know why this is. During the Lena Dunham thing it was Youngest, all over the back seat of the car. This time, with that rather odd Times piece on equality, it’s been both of them in turn, one after the other (to be precise, one onto the pyjamas of his brother, prompting the latter to puke onto the floor – we call it vominoes). Obviously next time Moran plans on tweeting or writing anything remotely controversial, I’d like to be made aware so I can get a bucket at the ready.

That said, I always end up following said twitterstorms, in-between vomit mop-ups. The truth is, if Caitlin Moran didn’t exist we’d have to invent her. For philosophical purposes, obviously. She’s like that tree falling down in the forest with no one there to hear it, or … Actually, I don’t know many examples of philosophical stuff (I only got halfway through Sophie’s World in 1998). But anyhow, Caitlin Moran has meanings that extend way beyond anything she herself has written or said. I’m sure there’s a special word for stuff like that, I just don’t know what it is (I ought to know these words because I’m a privileged person. The reason I don’t is because I’m lacking in intellectual curiosity, busy with two kids and not quite sure how to look up words for phenomena that I don’t quite know how to describe in the first place. So not unlike Caitlin Moran, you could say). Continue reading →

I’m trying out a passive-aggressive tactic to see if I can get more hits?

I’m too upset to carry on now that my favourite troll has lost interest in me?

I am leaving my partner and kids behind and pissing off for an all-expenses-paid week in the Caribbean?

To maximise the annoyance factor of this blog post, I will now reveal that it’s Option Number Four. It is a business trip – but given that my business trips in recent years have been to Corby, Chipping Sodbury and Walsall, it’s a pretty sodding unusual one. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s the real Caribbean and not just a conference centre in Dudley that happens to be called Barbados, but we shall see. To be honest, I still can’t believe it, although I’ve known for a couple of months.

Obviously everyone around me is taking the piss out of the very idea that this is “work”. It is, mind – but it’s in the fucking Caribbean! And every night I get to go back to a hotel room – in the Caribbean! – with no kids to put to bed or anything. I will miss them, of course, but I also can’t bloody wait! I don’t think I deserve this trip – it’s just something that happened due to an accident of project distribution – but I’m gonna really, really appreciate it.

If the WIFI in the hotel is crap (and I’ve heard that it is) I might have to go without twitter, too. And I will miss people there. I was having a ponder about it today and realised that I’ve been blogging and using twitter for seven months now. In that time I’ve encountered loads of people who are not only lovely, but who have challenged me and changed my way of thinking. I think *soppy bit* it is making me a more tolerant person. Although *less soppy bit* it is also making me a rude, antisocial person who just stares at her phone and ignores actual people in her presence. Swings and roundabouts, eh?

Anyhow, enough of a rather boring but uncharacteristically positive post from me. I’m *cough* pissing off to the Caribbean! I’m outta here! Will really miss people but, um, yes … it’s the fucking Caribbean!

*swans off*

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Now and then, if I’m in a particularly boring meeting or social situation, I find my mind begins to wander. And before long, I get round to wondering what would happen – what the actual, practical outcome would be – were I to do something completely random and offensive. It might be to do with nudity, or sex, or swearing, or just being a total prick. I don’t spend long dwelling on what I’d actually do. It’s the outcome that interests me. It’s not because I secretly want to do such a thing. It’s just thinking of it creates a little frisson when you’re bored out of your mind. You find yourself getting slightly scared – what if I forget and actually do it? It’s like standing on a high balcony and getting ever so stressed that you’ll have a “mad moment” and jump off. You sort of know you won’t, but you could and therefore you still just might. All it would take would be for me to say one word – just one word – and I could quite possibly destroy my whole career. Once you start thinking that it’s quite hard to stop (or perhaps it’s just be? Either way, I’ve been this way ever since 1980, when I used to fantasise about shinning up the climbing frame and yelling “bloody hell!” in the middle of assembly). Continue reading →

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Imagine being so much of a loser that you get out a biro and write the word “winner” on your hand, in a desperate attempt to suppress the knowledge of just how how pathetic you are. Imagine being so confused and distracted sexually that you consider watching your fave non-sexual TV programmes – say, Holby City, or perhaps the footie – the perfect accompaniment to orgasm. Imagine taking a photo of a faceless woman giving you a blowjob and tweeting it to 23,000 laddish followers, just so they can raise a glass at your cock being sucked since that’s sure as hell not happening to them. Imagine then then following this up with random tweets offering “respect” to dead soldiers and kids in wheelchairs, just to demonstrate that deep down, you adhere to a mawkish, sentimental “I love ya, bro” code of ethics straight out of a Carlsberg ad. Imagine … Actually, I have no idea why I am asking you to imagine any of this. It’s bad enough that so many lonely male students apparently aspire to live it. Continue reading →

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Zach Braff – did you like him more when he was wannabe arty and desperately unfunny, or wannabe sexist and desperately unfunny? Me, I liked the first version best (although “like” may be too strong a word). To be fair, he makes a better sexist than he does an arty actor/film-maker, but I’m not just scoring on attainment (it’s an arbitrary scoring system in my head and how it works is a secret – that’s just the sort of incoherent thing women do). Continue reading →

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This morning my youngest tried to go on the “big potty” i.e. the toilet all by himself. Needless to say, it all went horribly wrong. It looked like a massacre had taken place. A massacre with poo in place of blood. So then I ended up spending the five minutes before all of us were due to be out of the house crouched on the floor in my work clothes, cleaning up room and pre-schooler, all the while assuring the latter that no, Mummy wasn’t cross and yes, he was still “a big boy”, just a big boy who, at this point in time, happened to be smeared in faeces.

Why am I telling you this? Well, partly it’s because it’s one of those madcap mummy mayhem moments that we all love to share (regardless of whether anyone wants to listen). And partly it’s because I would have announced this earlier on Twitter anyhow, only my phone isn’t working and my netbook’s not as practical for such on-the-go tweeting (it takes ages to get going and I’d have only got poo on the keyboard). Continue reading →

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Right now, twitter feels a dangerous place upon which to be making jokes and random quips. Sure, the twitter joke trial is over, Guy Adams has had his account reinstated and the Tom Daley troll has not, as far as I know, been tarred and feathered on the nearest village green.* Even so, I wouldn’t want to push my luck. Not with corporate lawyers on one side and the righteous twitter mob on the other.

Thus I am not going to make a huge fuss about rap star Professor Green tweeting crap “jokes” about bulimia. I have no desire to kick a man when he’s down and I’d imagine that, if you’re a rapper, having Private Eye point out that you look like Michael Gove would be making you feel pretty down to begin with:

So yeah, Professor – real name Stephen – I have no desire to mock you, in the manner in which one might mock sufferers of a potentially fatal yet nevertheless hugely embarrassing and much misunderstood illness. Continue reading →

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Whenever I see I’ve got new mentions on twitter, I’m overcome by a feeling of dread. You might call it having a naturally guilty conscience. I invariably think “oh shit, what have I done / what have they found out now?” It doesn’t make much sense – no one has ever tweeted anything nasty about me (yet). But I have this sense that one day I will be “found out” – over what, I just don’t know – and everyone will then know “the truth” and I’ll be publicly named and shamed.

Well, enough about me and my idle, self-important paranoia. I have just spent the evening witnessing someone else take their place in the Twitter Hall of Shame (I have also been watching Snakes on a Plane, but hey, I’m versatile – I can do both!). And by “someone else”, I mean the Tom Daley troll. I’m not quite sure why I’ve been watching this. I suppose I’ve never before witnessed someone having so complete a meltdown into violent, hate-filled, furious threats. I’ve never really seen so much real-life anger being spewed out, live, in real time, while I sit comfortably in a position of safety. I can just watch and watch. And so I’ve watched, as have many others (not that this excuses my own voyeurism – that’s down to me alone). Continue reading →

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Last night I scored my first “proper” full-on misogynist blog comment. It was, to put it mildly, a shock to the system. While up till then I’d had the odd attempt at a sexist put-down – “no sense of humour”, “PMS”, even the word “feminist” itself – this was something else. Although not remotely on the scale of the misogynist taunts and threats I’ve seen hurled at other women on Twitter, this upset me. Thankfully some lovely tweets and comments from some lovely people soon put it right. Oh, and some wine – that helped, too.

I’m not going to write a long post about this because other women have experienced far worse and have far more revealing stories to tell. What I am going to write about is the one remaining type of sexist comment I’ve received, the one that actually amuses me. I call it the Men’s Rights Flounce. Continue reading →

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Response to Alice Vincent, who, as Liz Jarvis discusses on The Mum Blog, insulted Giles Coren on Twitter with the comment: “Columnists basing their opinions around their children. So yawn. Your column today is one step up from a mumsnet blogpost”

Hi, Alice Vincent! Are you reading this? I’d assume so, since you’re the expert in what constitutes a ‘mumsnet blogpost’. Not your favourite genre, I understand? Still, you’ve gotta keep track of all the literary trends, even the shit ones.

That spat with Giles Coren – don’t mind him. He’s just a sexist tosspot with a more famous, funnier dad (now sadly deceased) and a more intelligent sister (now marrying the lovely David Mitchell, the bitch). I wouldn’t bother with the runt of the Coren litter, poor Giles. Stick with us, the mumsnet bloggers. We’ll cater for all your boredom needs without ever telling you to fuck off while throwing misogynist insults into the ether.

Sorry, are you still awake? Course you are. You’re used to Mumsnet posts like this. Hardened to it, one might say.

Thanks for being there for us, Alice. In the plain, boring, jam-smeared wasteland that is Mummy Central, it’s good to know people like you are still listening out for our aimless babble.

POSTSCRIPT Alice Vincent did in fact respond to this on Twitter. She seemed very nice, for a barren old hag. Only kidding. She seemed very nice. Giles Coren, you’re a real tosser. But I’m not going to tweet you regarding this.